Cloudburst
by Oparu
Summary: A post-"I Want to Believe" Mulder and Scully run into a post-"Breaking Dawn" Carlisle and Esme somewhere in the tropics. Carlisle and Scully work together and Mulder and Esme bond over being doctor's wives. Snapshots of a possible future.


**Fox:**

A redhead, gentle eyes and perfectly formed, petite legs like another redhead in his life, she comes out with the rain. Sure, it rains a lot down here, it's tropical, but he sees her on the beach, and most people only come down to the beach in the rain. Not him, of course, Mulder's always been a little bit different.

She might be as well.

Jogging by her on Saturday, while Scully's at the clinic, he tries a wave. It's slight, something she, the woman who wears her swimsuit out into the rain, could ignore if she wanted to pretend she's alone on the beach.

She smiles. So, on Tuesday, the days in between have all been maddeningly sunny, Mulder smiles instead of simply waving.

She beams at him.

* * *

**Carlisle:**

Doctor Scully has a scent that intrigues him enough that he wants to touch her hair just to make sure that scent is real. It's subtle. They've been working together for nearly two weeks before he even notices it amongst the other smells of the hospital. He knows she's from the FBI and that once, long ago, she had another life.

Carlisle understands what it's like to disappear. He and Esme are alone for the first time in decades. Edward and Bella are the centre of the family at this moment and he and his wife, are simply that. Husband and wife, alone in this clinic on the edge of the jungle. It rains a great deal this close to the Amazon. The people around them are tolerant, too happy to have American doctors to question anything.

Doctor Scully is hiding something. She wears no wedding ring, but he can smell her mate on her. The mate is human, and the scent of him reminds Carlisle of baseball. The mate is unimportant, simply a good man, like Charlie Swan and the hundreds of good men he's known before.

Scully- Dana, as she's asked him to be called just that afternoon, has a scar on the back of her neck and something beyond human technology is beneath it. He can't know what it is. He can't place the smell. It's unknown. After all of these centuries, an unknown is something he can't resist.

* * *

**Dana:**

Mulder lays beneath her, wrapping his hands around her hips, holding her close as he orgasms up into her. She can feel him jerk and sighes contendly as she slips off with a kiss.

Back from the lavatory, she crawls into bed and rests her cheek on his damp chest. He's still leanly muscled, as he's been the entire time she's known him. He's still her constant in this dreamy South American world. There's no talk of aliens, no television, and only two cheap cellphones so they know where to meet each other for dinner.

She whispers that she loves him. He musses her hair and slips her head up so he can kiss her properly. He adores her and the touch of his skin rivals heaven as the rain pours down outside their little villa near the beach. Doctor Cullen and his wife live on the water. Mulder wanted to buy the villa nearby, but she argued against it. She thought they might need to save their money.

Scully didn't know she'd end up working. That treating tetanus and boating accidents could be as fulfilling as trying to save the world when she has Mulder to come home to.

He murmurs that he loves her and nuzzles her forehead. "No lines", he notices softly.

Yesterday she found a gray hair on his chest, and age has been a topic of discussion. Listening to the thunder, she smiles and kisses him. "You're not trying hard enough," she teases. They're still young enough. They have each other.

* * *

**Esme:**

On Thursday she pats the sand by her side and he sits. The runner flops down beside her, grinning as she extends her hand.

"Esme Cullen," she says warmly.

The runner holds her hand for a moment, surprised by her accent and her manners. He recovers and kisses the rain-dampened back of her hand.

"Married to Doctor Cullen?" the runner ask, coyly witholding his name.

"I am," she replies, matching his smile.

"Then we're already friends," he offers, releasing her hand as he looks up at the grey sky. "My wife works with Carlisle. Doctor Scully?"

Esme nods at the name, "my husband speaks fondly of her. You are very lucky, Mr. Scully."

This makes him smile, even chuckle, and he offers his hand again. "Call me Fox, please." His grip is firm and through the rain he smells of baseball and sunflower seeds. "Your hands are cold," he notices. "Want my jacket?"

"I'm fine," she assures him, touched by his gallantry. "I never feel the cold."

* * *

**Fox:**

"Carlisle told me you accepted a dinner invitation," Dana begins, looking up from her book. He loves the way she peers at him over the binding. "Mr. Scully."

"I did," he agrees, slipping off the sofa to rest at her feet. He brings his chin to her knee. "I met his wife, Esme, on the beach where we doctor's wives spend our time whilst our better halves save the world. We had a long discusson about women's suffrage after I mentioned how much work you'd gone too to make sure I voted in the last election."

"It wasn't as if they could track us," she reminds him, tapping his forehead with the book before she eyes it aside. "Carlisle can talk about historic events as if he's been there. Not just turn of the century things, he's mentioned eighteenth century, seventeenth century--"

Raising his eyebrows, he pouts until she lowers her lips to his. "Should be an interesting dinner, don't you think?"

* * *

**Carlisle:**

The little vial in his fingers in her blood, Dana's, and Carlisle turns it over, watching it cling to the sides. Standard procedure requires a battery of blood tests after they're all exposed to a contagion. He drew this one himself. He remembers her smile as she waved him goodnight.

"Don't stay up too late," Dana warned as she left. "You don't have to do this, surely you want to go home as much as I do."

"Esme will wait for me," he answered. "She's very patient. I truly don't deserve her"

He needed this sample. Carlisle needed to know what was in her blood. He removes the wax seal, opening the vial and taking a deep whiff. The smell of her blood invades his nose, pouring into his nasal passages as if it's liquid gold. Bella's blood was an intoxicant, something nearly irresitible, but Dana's is something else entirely. She doesn't even smell human.

He dips his pinkie into the vial, feeling the blood coat his skin. It's cold, an odd state for blood, and he'd never normally do anthing this blaise, but this is for science.

Licking his finger, he feels the rush of blood, human blood rushing through him like fire. Carlisle breathes through it, though he requires no oxygen, he likes the motion. He can be objective; he must be. The fire cools faster than it would if he was feeding. His blood cools, returning to normal but a tingling sensation remains. It passing through him with his circulation, leaving trails through his body.

He recaps the vial, reaching for his notebook to write down his observations. If he'd been able to see his reflection, he would have noticed that his eyes are icy blue. They pass through green before fading back to gold.

* * *

**Dana:**

Carlisle confronts her about the scar on her neck. Dana covers it with her fingers, having trouble meeting his gentle eyes. Fox is in the kitchen, explaning to Esme how to use the immersion blender. It's the blind leading the blind for neither of them cook, but they both seem to respect the moment.

Dana leans over Carlisle's desk, letting him feel the scar tissue around the chip. She doesn't know if he'll believe her, why would he? Yet when he asks, she finds words. She explains the abduction, the first chip, her cancer, her brush with death, the chip that saved her; when she gets to her pregnancy there are tears in her eyes.

He hands her a handkerchief, silk and monogrammed, classic and old-fashioned so it fits him. She cries into his shoulder when she tells him about William. He rubs her shoulders but he feels like marble.

* * *

**Esme:**

Fox keeps watching her. He has patient eyes, and Esme eliminates all the reasons he could be fascinated until she realises he must suspect something. She's out of practice with food. It's mechanical to eat and he stops her after her second bite.

"You don't have to put on a show for me," he offers, taking her plate and stacking her steak on top of his own. "What do you eat?"

"Animals," she answers truthfully, surprised at her own admission. "Predators are the most appealing. Jaguars, wld boars, the more dangerous they are, they better they taste."

"You're not obsessive compulsive, are you?" Fox asks, pausing as he eats.

Esme tilts her head, passing him the wine as she shakes her head. "No, I can't say that I've ever been."

* * *

**Fox:**

Dana's eyes are red when she emerges from the study. Leaving the table, Fox wraps his arms around her. "I said you could talk to her, not make her cry," he teases Carlisle, and the doctor- vampire, his mind corrects, nods once apologetically.

"It was not my intention," Carlisle offers, sitting down next to his wife. Their hands wind together and Fox wonders how long they've been together.

"My fault," Dana assures him, keeping her grip on his hand as they sit down. They eat without discussing vampirism. Carlisle and Esme are impeccable hosts and to the surprise of all, the four part ways amenably.

"Vampires," he sighs when they climb into bed. Dana clings to him tightly, even the night is warm. "Polite vampires."

She kisses his chest, then turns her cheek to lie back down. "He wants to remove the chip."

* * *

**Carlisle:**

In the end, it's a fever that forces Carlisle's hand. It's something viral and it runs hot through the population of the tiny island. Dana tries to isolate it, working tirelessly through the night even though she is human and cannot push herself like he can.

In a week he's concerned, at the end of two, he's exhausted. The bodies pile up around them and Esme starts burying them, quietly in the trees. Fox, who still responds to Mr. Scully with a grin, helps as much as he can but the virus is stronger and faster than Carlisle and Dana's combined intellects.

One wet night he has to wake a barely functioning Dana and tell her Fox's temperature has climbed. By morning he'll be unconscious and by nightfall, dead.

Even though she looks like a wraith, as stiff and cold as he is, her face crumbles. She opens her mouth to ask, and he hushes her.

"He'll be different," he reminds Dana.

"I won't live without him," it tumbles from her lips like a threat.

"I don't think she can die," Carlisle admits to his wife before he kisses her.

Esme nods to him, wrapped around him like his own ray of sunlight. "So you will turn her?"

* * *

**Dana:**

Carlisle won't let her watch. Esme's haunted eyes suggest it may be as terrible as she fears. Dana paces, then sits, head in her hands and tries not to stare at the doorway to the bedroom every few moments.

Esme sits with her and her silent presence is the only thing that keeps her from raging. When Dana asks, Esme shows her the scar.

"In ninety years, it's never faded," Esme runs her fingers along it. "He saved me. He'll save Fox."

Dana fingers her own neck, feeling naked with the cross. Mulder needs it more. "And what will he be like?"

"Himself," Esme promises, wrapping her cool hands around Dana's. "After awhile. The first few days are always difficult. I remember being angry, hungry and full of power. Rather like being newborn with the strength of a demon. It may be different, Fox is the oldest person Carlisle has ever turned."

* * *

**Esme:**

Dana is are asleep when it happens; head resting in Esme's lap. Fox, despite his age, driven by an instinct all of them miscalculated. Esme moves at the roar, putting her body between Fox and Dana's fragile human one. Fox's eyes are red and his teeth are bared like a rabid animal. Carlisle's a step behind him, hair mussed because Fox must have tossed him aside.

They thought it would take longer, that he'd be weaker.

Fox takes Dana, before she can react. Esme reaches for her, but Carlisle shakes his head. Esme's never witnessed a turning. She's never heard the screaming rip through someone's throat. Nausea was a sensation she thought she'd put a century behind her. Carlisle holds her and moves her back.

The scent of Dana's and Fox's blood fills the air, making it thick and delicious. She doesn't know how he does it, but her husband smacks Fox away.

Carlisle touches Dana's face, brushing the tears aside as she writhes. "I'm sorry it went this quickly.

Fox snarls at Carlisle, but Esme's starting to understand. He is a child, and like a child having a tantrum, he must be taught the boundaries. She grabs his arm and tugs him back. She has to hit him through the plate glass window but they tumble out into the jungle together.

He still wants Dana, but she's stronger than he is. She's older. When he tries to bite her, she slaps him and asserts her dominance.

It isn't until his first kill that she realises his eyes are ice blue. When he feeds on the jaguar, his eyes go gold.

* * *

**Fox:**

Through death, down the rabbit hole into fire and pain, Fox comes to his own in bed, arms wrapped around the Dana's cool body. Something's crusted on his mouth and he's thinking of the scent of his mother. Though, Teena never had red hair.

It's dark, but the lack of light doesn't bother him. He can see in the darkness. _Of course he can. _He slips from the bed, feeling his own teeth. Fangs. He has fucking fangs. Leaping clumsily back into the bed, he finds a scar on Dana's neck. Her breathing is slow and steady but her skin is as cool as his own.

He parts her lips, feeling for the fangs.

She nips him in response. The sleepy eyes that open to gaze at him are icy blue.

As are his own, she tells him. Pulling the soft pyjamas left for him on over his naked body, Fox leads Dana out into the living room.

In the Cullen house, Carlisle and Esme are replacing a window. Both of them smile, and as they hug, all eyes are gold.

Dana's blood was special. Turning her deactivated the chip. Carlisle thinks it might have killed her eventually. Fox feels her in his arms and knows only peace.

The island will recover. They agree to stay awhile, then move on. Esme asks him if they've ever been to Africa.

Dana laughs, wondering if they turn to dust in the sunlight. Esme pulls her to the light and as Fox kisses her, the light of her skin is dazzling.


End file.
